Google unveils Nexus 4, Nexus 10, Android 4.2

While Microsoft is unveiling all about Windows Phone 8, Google ruined the party a little bit by ‘leaking’ all about Android 4.2, the Nexus 10 tablet, and the new Nexus phone, the LG Nexus 4. There’s some pretty awesome stuff in here from Google – except for the fact the devices themselves are kind of ugly.

To start with Android 4.2, this is an expansion which builds on Jelly Bean, which still carries some fun new features. The most interesting new feature here is multiuser support, which is a feature that should’ve been on tablets from the very beginning. I’ve noticed that tablets tend to get passed around like crazy among friends during get-togethers, and while I don’t have a family, I’m sure it’s the same there. Multiuser – which both Android and Windows 8 will now bring to tablets – will make that use-case a lot easier.

But even for me, this is a welcome feature. My Nexus 7 is my personal device, and much like how I don’t like people messing with my phone without asking (there’s personal stuff in there), I’m always a bit anxious about people handling my tablet, but with multiuser I can just set up a guest account and be done with it. I’m pretty sure iOS will follow suit soon.

It’s got a few other nice touches as well, such as zooming in Gmail (hallelujah!), widgets on the lock screen, accessibility improvements, improved Google Now, gesture typing, and so on.

As always with every new Android version, we’ve got Nexus devices. This time around, we’re looking at both a phone and a tablet – both pretty affordable, yet still entirely fully specced. The Nexus 10 is a Samsung-built, Google-designed 10″ tablet with a whopping 2560×1600 display (300 ppi). It’s powered by a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor, 2GB of RAM, and a quad-core Mail T604 graphical chip. Google claims 9 hours of HD video playback, but we’ll need some proper tests to confirm this.

As for pricing, the 16 GB version is only $399, which, for all intents and purposes, is very, very cheap (the 32GB version is $499). This is cheaper than the competition, but sadly, I find the device’s looks pretty crappy compared to especially the Surface RT. Not the most important of aspects, of course, but it just stood out to me. It’ll be available on 13 November in the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Spain and Canada.

There’s also a new smartphone – the LG-built Nexus 4. It has a 4.7″ 1280×768 IPS display, a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB of RAM, and 8 or 16GB of storage space. The back is made of etched an layered glass, which, on photos, looks kinda nice. The display is the latest of the latest – laminated, 320 ppi, and its touch sensor is integrated into the Gorilla Glass 2 layer. It doesn’t have LTE, though, since that would require Google to submit too stricter carrier limitations. Not a big deal for most people outside of the US, since LTE isn’t very widespread just yet.

Here, too, pricing is a headliner. The 8GB version has an unlocked price of just $299 – which is just insane. Let me reiterate: unlocked. I have no intention of buying them – I find them bland and ugly – but with prices like this it’s pretty clear Google is going for the price argument.

You don’t, except people will want to read their sdcards on their computers, which tend to run Windows. According to most accounts, MS demands some number of $s per device (usually 15). Last I saw mention of the vfat patent was when a court in Germany decided Motorola infringed on it.

Well.. It is very easy to incorporate a ext4 driver on the CD that is containing the manual etc. Just pop in the CD and a few minutes later your ext4 formatted micro-SD card is easy readable.

Result? No money for Microsoft, because you are working with a filesystem they cannot ask money for.

As most people would only use their own system to read that device, it would not be a big problem. And who knows? If other manufacturers notice they can make things cheaper that way it maybe will become an alternative.

Not sure why any of the companies involved would invest in writing, shipping and supporting a file system driver when services like Google Drive are available for leveraging which allow the user to sync their files between devices without plugging their phone into a computer period. If it’s not already, I expect google drive to be heavily integrated into Android by google themselves which from what I can tell comes at no added expense to the device makers period. Not to mention not including said hardware has to be cheaper to manufacture which translates to either a cheaper price tag or added revenue or both since no file system software has to be written or licensed.

No micro-SD? 16GB is pitiful if you there’s no external storage (let alone 8GB). It drives me crazy that my current phone only has 32GB external storage. I can fit only a fraction of my music on there, and while I can certainly live without being able to put it all on there, it’s really annoying to not be able to. And streaming services (including Google Music) don’t cut it, because streaming all of that data is a total waste of money in comparison to putting the songs in local storage (it also requires have a good connection, which I don’t always have).

No micro-SD? 16GB is pitiful if you there’s no external storage (let alone 8GB).

That there is no external storage is not entirely correct. You can use an USB OTG cable and connect normal USB flash drives.

This is of course much less convenient than having an SD card inserted into the device.

Well, considering you’d be able to change it – it would be more convenient as most that have the SD cards have them placed such that you have to power off the device to take them out or put them in. So they tend not to be extra storage so much as expandable storage to the limits of the device.

Also I do like how both devices look, at least to the extent one can judge them by pictures in play store.

Agreed. I quite like the look of the devices, but I’d really have to hold and use on in person to judge. If it passes the touchy-feely test, AND ends up supporting 3G/LTE then I will likely be replacing my now obsolete iPad 1 with one of these.

Apple should be unhappy they started this whole “retina screen” hype. Now each Apple device has a lower resolution than a respective Nexus device.

Retina isn’t about having the highest resolution possible, its about having the highest resolution practical. They were actually quite smart about the marketing. They drew an arbitrary line called retina, saying that any greater resolution can’t revel any more information to our biological eyes. So apple’s response to these higher resolution screens is quite predictable: they’ll say the extra pixels are wasted.

Originally they said that Retina is 300 PPI, because this is the “magic number”, but the iPad 3 had less but was still Retina. Nexus 10 has exactly 300. To argue it’s wasted they’d need to revise what Steve said on iPhone 4 release.

Also the argument that there’s an optimal number is harder to sell. Typically when people are told that some metric is important, they are easy to convince that the more the better. See GHz, megapixels etc.

Indeed great devices. I am looking out for the Nexus7 with 32GB RAM. That clearly beets any Surface. Speaking of Surface: the SDK was still not released? How to they expect people to write apps? Start to believe the rumors that the SDK is delayed cause of the upcoming Surface Phone carry truth. Related to Surface Phone: http://yle.fi/uutiset/game_over_for_nokia_says_ex-microsoft_exec/63…

Why no micro-SD card in later Nexuses? Simple answer: politics. Google wants you to use Google Drive (the decision to ditch micro-SD from nexuses must have been taken around the time they started planning google drive), because they see a vast amount of personal data to mine through. Or at least they want to push users to use their services, so they can serve ads and subscription plans. Even if a micro-SD was a no-no for whatever technical reasons, there is no reason why they couldn’t have made a 32GB and 64GB version of the Galaxy Nexus.

PS: Didn’t know microSD was officially supported by Android. That’s news to me. I thought micro-SD support was a kludge by the OEMs. Does the Nexus One mount the external SD to /sdcard/sd, /sdcard/_ExternalSD or /ext-sd ? Because i ‘ve seen all those three variations by OEMs.

PS: Didn’t know microSD was officially supported by Android. That’s news to me. I thought micro-SD support was a kludge by the OEMs. Does the Nexus One mount the external SD to /sdcard/sd, /sdcard/_ExternalSD or /ext-sd ? Because i ‘ve seen all those three variations by OEMs.

On my Nexus One running stock Android, it was mounted to /mnt/sdcard/.

Apple just released an LTE phone in the US on all major carriers. So now Google customers are stuck between buying this piece of shit or having to choose a phone that is violated by the carriers and will take 6-8 months to get updates.

If Apple can manage to work with carriers and get us LTE with timely updates, why can’t Google? I don’t like iOS at all and would rather tongue the sweaty asshole of a Kenyan marathon runner than own an iPhone, but sometimes being an Android user is goddamn frustrating.

Apple just released an LTE phone in the US on all major carriers. So now Google customers are stuck between buying this piece of shit or having to choose a phone that is violated by the carriers and will take 6-8 months to get updates.

I’m an iPhone user but I think this phone is brilliant. So it’s not LTE which is a little surprising in 2012, but it’s also $299. That’s crazy affordable for the technology. Never missed an SD card or a removable battery so I don’t see that as a negative.

The only concern I would have about this trend is that Google is likely just breaking even on the hardware or the margins are razor thin. So where are they making their money? Well by advertising to you. So I’m a little wary that the entire business model rests on squeezing as much money out of me post-purchase, when my personal information is so valuable to advertisers.

Since today all the devices are assembled in china by more or less the same factories there is hardly an quality argument to make on hw level. Its all the same crap.

As if China can’t make good quality stuff. Of course they can, that’s just not the usual business model. If you don’t think there’s a difference between the quality of an iPhone or top Android phone and a no-name chinese brand then you’ve clearly never used either.

This isn’t about noname brands. Are you aware that the iPhone 5 is $185 in material? The by far biggest chunk that increases the end-user price is neither QA nor sallery nor anything else (at the manufactor side – hey, foxconn, cheaper then cheap) that contributes to the quality of the product, its all the R&D and serviced that makes the final product + profit. The reason why iPhone is perceived as good quality is the overall product, design, software and services. Thats why it sells and why the high profit margins and R&D investment are possible. Assembling the hardware together id by far the lowest contributor to quality. But yes, every of that components can turn a otherwise good product bad.

This isn’t about noname brands. Are you aware that the iPhone 5 is $185 in material? The by far biggest chunk that increases the end-user price is neither QA nor sallery nor anything else (at the manufactor side – hey, foxconn, cheaper then cheap) that contributes to the quality of the product, its all the R&D and serviced that makes the final product + profit. The reason why iPhone is perceived as good quality is the overall product, design, software and services. Thats why it sells and why the high profit margins and R&D investment are possible. Assembling the hardware together id by far the lowest contributor to quality. But yes, every of that components can turn a otherwise good product bad.

I completely agree with you, but I think it makes my point. With Nexus devices squeezing margins to just over cost to produce, then they are relying on covering their R&D costs in other ways (post-purchase advertising revenue).

Hence the poor design or quality control in no-name devices. They are covering their cost to manufacture, but can’t afford to spend any money on QA or integration work. Sure you can get a tablet for $100, but the overall quality will be pretty miserable, even if the build quality itself is relatively close to the more expensive devices, there will be issues with software integration, or drivers, or updates, etc.

For me it sounds like you assume noname == Nexus 4 == bad quality cause they (Google) has a rather low margin. I strongly disagree with that logic chain.

Fact is Google is making money by making Android the #1 and having fast majority of customers (user stay customers cause of the service-story afterwards) using there door to the internet. They make money and the strategy works out well what is what counts (for google). Sure they could make more by increasing the profit margin for the hardware but this could (and would) mean lesser market share and hence lesser ad- and services-income, lesser customers for there core business. This is not google’s business model. Its not there target to make money by selling devices, unlike Apple, but by being everybodys door to the internet, to there services.

Your logic that the quality is more miserable if the end-uder price is lower is just flawed. It completely misses the differences in the business models, it misses target groups, it misses the profit differences between Apple and google, it misses the ecosystem-effect google build around Android with exactly that cheap price tactic, it misses market segmentation, it misses strategy investments. It boils all that down to:

Higher end-user price == higher quality.

Also when you are going to compare on sold devices only then add least try to get the likes like Samsung into your comparission. They are much closer to Apple’s business model then Google is. Try to understand WHO is doing the R&D for iPhone vs Android and WHO is doing the services for iPhone vs Android and WHO is doing the products/devices for iPhone vs Android and WHAT are there business models.

Then its clear why your logic chain is wrong. Just accept the fact that Apple as of today is not interested to increase market share, there focus is on increasing profit by sold device. Unlike google which does not even make a single $ with all the Android devices e.g. Samsung sold UP to the moment the customer has the device in there hand and starts using it.

The only concern I would have about this trend is that Google is likely just breaking even on the hardware or the margins are razor thin. So where are they making their money?

Don’t fool yourself. Apple is in advertising as well. Just cause you shell out a sh%t ton of money doesn’t mean they aren’t doing the same analytics on your usage and data.

Three is nothing to prove that Apple isn’t any more or less evil than Google other than crack pot ideas about pricing of devices.

When it comes down to it the reason why Google is coming out with cheap tablets is to gain adoption. They want a consumer this holiday season to look at a Nexus device and choose it on price over some of the competition. The goal here is to try and kick start the Android tablet eco-system. Attract more developers or get current developers to write tablet optimized devices.

The biggest complaint about Android tablets is the lack of proper applications. Prove android is a proper and popular platform and allow for other non-nexus devices to charge a premium later down the road once the ecosystem is a true competitor to iOS/iPad.

Don’t fool yourself. Apple is in advertising as well. Just cause you shell out a sh%t ton of money doesn’t mean they aren’t doing the same analytics on your usage and data.

Big difference between being in advertising and your entire business model depending on it. The lions share of Apple’s profits comes from hardware and one would hope that they will be smart enough not to endanger those profits by alienating people with intrusive adverts. I think they do get it. Just look at a mac compared to a PC out of the box. Any consumer PC is riddled with advertisements and shitty trialware software out of the box, while a mac is clean.

That said I would prefer if they were not in advertising at all.

Three is nothing to prove that Apple isn’t any more or less evil than Google other than crack pot ideas about pricing of devices.

Any consumer PC is riddled with advertisements and shitty trialware software out of the box

My Lenovo T430s disagrees with that statement.

What part of consumer laptops did you not understand? I just bought a lenovo for a client and it was crammed full of crap software from Lenovo (their “enhanced” system tools) and trial antivirus bullshit.

I’m an iPhone user but I think this phone is brilliant. So it’s not LTE which is a little surprising in 2012, but it’s also $299.

That’s fine, but I wish they’d make two Nexus phones… one for the low-end, and one for the high-end. Fact is, if you want to stay with stock Android, you have less phones/tablets to choose from than iOS users do. And you know you have a problem when you’re offering fewer options than Apple

The only concern I would have about this trend is that Google is likely just breaking even on the hardware or the margins are razor thin. So where are they making their money? Well by advertising to you. So I’m a little wary that the entire business model rests on squeezing as much money out of me post-purchase, when my personal information is so valuable to advertisers.

Nice thing about Nexus devices is that they’re super simple to root. And once you have rooted, then get this:

Let’s see. Nexus 4 vs iPhone 5 is 4:5 with the differences that first not only the last 2 Nexus device are still supported and second they are all very different in specs, design, form factor unlike iPhone. Looks for me as Google offers more choice in there Nexus portfolio then Apple does with its very same phone since v1 (with the exception of the newer bigger screen).

Let’s see. Nexus 4 vs iPhone 5 is 4:5 with the differences that first not only the last 2 Nexus device are still supported and second they are all very different in specs, design, form factor unlike iPhone. Looks for me as Google offers more choice in there Nexus portfolio then Apple does with its very same phone since v1 (with the exception of the newer bigger screen).

There’s only one phone that Google is currently selling, and that’s the Nexus 4 (Gnex is no longer in the Play store), in 8/16gb and unlocked. With the iPhone, you get 16/32/64 and either unlocked or LTE with carriers, plus you have a choice of two different colors.

Also, Apple’s got a ‘player’ device (iPod Touch), a 7″, and a 10″. Google only has a 7″ and 10″, and with fewer configurations than Apple does.

If you want to do away with the adds, consider actually supporting people who wrote the software.

I always do, assuming they give me the option (which many don’t). I don’t block ads to get free stuff; I block ads because I HATE advertising. (And no, I don’t subscribe to cable either, just in case you were wondering.)

I agree with everything that you said except for the LTE part. The new Nexus 4 supports 42Mbps+ HSPA+. It’s actually faster than almost all LTE networks in current existence now and for the next two to four years.

Outside of the US, a lot of mobile carrier companies will not be making truly significant upgrades in LTE until LTE Advanced (real 4G by ITU standards instead of marketing buzz) because current (3.9G) LTE carries little benefit compared to advanced UTMS networks for the majority of use cases outside of those that depend on lower latency. LTE upgrades make sense in the US because it is a major upgrade for CDMA based networks, such as those used by Verizon, Sprint, and many of the minor regional operators which make up over half of US carrier operations.

Outside of the US, focusing on improved UMTS/HSPA makes a lot more sense.

LG should probably just release a CDMA/US focused version that incorporates CDMA/LTE support.

I agree with everything that you said except for the LTE part. The new Nexus 4 supports 42Mbps+ HSPA+. It’s actually faster than almost all LTE networks in current existence now and for the next two to four years.

How does that equate to real-world speeds though? When I was on Verizon and had their Galaxy Nexus, I could get 15-20mbps when the reception was good. However, the radio on that phone was ass, so I switched to the GSM version.

On my GSM Gnex with AT&T, the fastest I’ve managed is about 4mbps, and that was after tweaking the APN settings a bit, with 4 bars of HSPA+. A friend of mine with the same phone can sometimes hit 5-6mbps on his Gnex with T-mo, but a lot of times, his speeds are lower than mine.

So you see, that’s a pretty big difference. It’s not a huge deal for day-to-day usage, but really sucks when tethering

HSPA+ varies wildly from country to country. Obviously, no one is going to get 21Mbps, let alone 42Mbps. Thing is, I’ve noticed (from Speedtest rankings and whatnot) that many European and Asian 3.5G/HSPA+ speeds are pretty close to what the average American gets on Verizon LTE (though I can’t speak for latency).

Where I live, I can get the equivalent of 10Mbps+ quite often, and around 14 during the early morning hours, and I live in a very saturated city. LTE just rolled out here a few months ago, and from what I’ve read, users get around 20Mbps if signal permits. So, yes, LTE is obviously faster, but it’s not really 4G speed like many telcos claim, and our 3.5G/HSPA+ speeds aren’t all that bad here. There’s obviously much more room for LTE to get faster though (4×4 MIMO – 20MHz supposedly goes up to 325Mbps), but I suspect most telcos will have moved on to totally different tech before that.

Then you would almost exactly arrive at the Galaxy S3. If Google sold it at a cheaper price, they would upset Samsung. If they sold it at the same price, people would question why we need the Nexus 4 at all. (lose-lose)

Now, Google can offer a device at an unbeatable price, and the other Android manufacturers still find a niche of people who are not satisfied with it. (win-win)

No, the alternative to a nexus phone for someone who wants android is choosing a phone supported by cyanogenmod. Like any of the Galaxy S3 models that have all of the features you’re complaining about.

Subjective opinion. Looking through the rest of your comment you make the awful impression of being a whiny kid who needs to have the latest and greatest shiny that is available on the market immediately when it’s released. Perhaps the Nexus 4 isn’t reason enough to upgrade for Galaxy Nexus owners, but being a 1st gen Nexus user myself, I can certainly see the appeal in the Nexus 4 (that’s barely a 3 year old phone, mind you).

Hey Google, 2010 called and wants its smartphone back.

The quad-core CPU, 2 gigs of RAM and huge screen certainly aren’t features from 2010, but it’s easy to forget if you’re only looking for spec-superiority in new products.

And while Google is making excuses about why an LTE phone is so impractical:

An Apple phone is also a lot more expensive. Oh and it also has no replaceable battery or SD card slot, but somehow it’s only bad when Google does it.

So now Google customers are stuck between buying this piece of shit or having to choose a phone that is violated by the carriers and will take 6-8 months to get updates.

Mind you, that’s a piece of shit which can only, per HSPA+ spec, get up to 168Mbit/s downlink and 22Mbit/s uplink speeds. I’m sure that is something worth crying over while you watch your 2GB data cap disappear in under 2 minutes (at 20Mbit/s, regular HSPA+ speeds, you’ll drain that in under 14 minutes).

If Apple can manage to work with carriers and get us LTE with timely updates, why can’t Google? I don’t like iOS at all and would rather tongue the sweaty asshole of a Kenyan marathon runner than own an iPhone, but sometimes being an Android user is goddamn frustrating.

The magnitude of your whining is somewhat astonishing, plus you’re crying on the wrong shoulder. You shouldn’t be crying over not being able to push hundreds of megabits per second through your mobile device, but rather complain to the carriers for capping your data usage at ridiculously low values or imposing crazy a FUP after some transferred amount.

Isn’t the real problem that there are multiple incompatible LTE standards? You’d have to make separate models for each version.

In a sense. The incompatibility seems to stem from the fact that LTE uses wildly different frequency bands. According to Wikipedia it’s at least the following:

* North America: 700/800/1700/1900 MHz

* South America: 2500 MHz

* Europe: 800/900/1800/2600 MHz

* Asia: 1800/2600 MHz

* Australia: 1800 MHz

So in total it appears there are 8 bands with wavelengths from 11.538cm to 42.857cm. In practice this means you’ll need more than one antenna to get good reception on all bands (if you aren’t familiar with electrical engineering, you can view an antenna like the string of a violin and the electromagnetic waves it receives like a bow – naturally a certain length string wants to resonate only at a certain frequency); probably three antennas, as the wavelengths seem clustered around 3 values: 37.5cm (700/800/900 MHz), 16.6cm (1700/1800/1900 MHz) and 12cm (2500/2600 MHz). Perhaps some bright engineer might be able to combine these into a single one, as the wavelengths appear close enough for some harmonic resonance to kick in (16.6 * 2 = 33.2, 12 * 3 = 36).

Next come the filters, amplifiers and dipoles. Much of this can be done digitally nowadays, but there’s nothing like a good analog preamp to make sure you have good signal clarity. In any case, these are miniature in modern ICs, so adding a bunch more isn’t going to hurt manufacturing terribly (after all, pentaband phones are common nowadays and don’t seem to suffer terribly inflated costs due to their radios).

The real kicker, though, is testing and certification. While LTE is a standard, knowing the companies implementing base station equipment, it’s often a hit-or-miss success story with compatibility, especially as the standards get more complex. LTE is enormously complex and very young, so equipment hasn’t yet had the time to mature, so there might be serious issues here that need to be ironed out. Obviously, when you’re planning on selling an unsubsidized phone without carrier cooperation, you want it to be as safe on the compatibility side as possible. This, probably, more than anything, forced Google to abandon LTE and go instead for the tried and true UMTS standard.

Yeah, I’ve never understand the appeal of mobile devices that run like the wind only to be forced to piffle out after a few minutes use. Why bother, why spend a small fortune…can’t get my head around it.

That’s not true at all, electronic waste is a major problem and it’s exacerbated when manufactures engineer non-user serviceable devices.

I’m not talking about the environmental aspect. I agree with you that we are generating lots of waste, but the fact that batteries aren’t replaceable doesn’t really factor into people’s decision to buy a phone anymore.

“I’m not talking about the environmental aspect. I agree with you that we are generating lots of waste, but the fact that batteries aren’t replaceable doesn’t really factor into people’s decision to buy a phone anymore.”

Well, the sales numbers don’t lie, you are right.

However a purchase of a non-battery-accessible device cannot be construed as a vote against having accessible batteries. It’s a subtle distinction having to do with the granularity of choices offered.

When given no fine grained choice about the battery, consumers will buy them anyways. However given a choice we may very well learn that many consumers would prefer an accessible battery and would even be willing to pay a bit more for it.

It is plausible a manufacturer may been aware that consumers wanted battery access, and never the less decided to do away with it for selfish reasons like built in obsolescence.

However a purchase of a non-battery-accessible device cannot be construed as a vote against having accessible batteries. It’s a subtle distinction having to do with the granularity of choices offered.

I never said I agree or disagree with the direction the manufacturers have taken. I was merely stating the fact of the market place – it simply doesn’t factor into people’s purchasing choices (I mean at large; not talking about individuals like yourself).

When given no fine grained choice about the battery, consumers will buy them anyways.

You can always purchase a smartphone with a removable battery, there’s still plenty of choice, e.g. (nearly) all of Samsungs offerings, AFAIK, still have removable batteries.

However given a choice we may very well learn that many consumers would prefer an accessible battery and would even be willing to pay a bit more for it.

Sales numbers clearly show this to be false. Accept it, people just don’t care.

It is plausible a manufacturer may been aware that consumers wanted battery access, and never the less decided to do away with it for selfish reasons like built in obsolescence.

Before you ascribe ulterior motives, try to look for valid technical reasons why a battery might not be field-replaceable. For instance, hinges, clips, connectors and release mechanisms all take up valuable space, compromise the device’s mechanical integrity, add weight and make hardware design generally more complex. They also make certain features nearly impossible, like Nexus 4’s laminated glass back (which adds scratch resistance – a feature consumers really want).

“Sales numbers clearly show this to be false. Accept it, people just don’t care.”

I don’t think you understood the subtle distinction I was trying to point out, let me try explaining it differently…When you vote for a candidate, it does not imply an endorsement of everything the candidate stands for, in fact there may be some areas that you are in complete disagreement with the candidate you vote for. Yet you’ll vote for him because you make a holistic decision based on a multitude of factors. It would be a fallacy to assume that voters agree with everything about the candidate they’ve voted for. Had there been more fine grained choices available amongst candidates, voters would be better able to reflect what they actually want by their vote.

Can you see how this applies to more mundane things like consumer purchases? When you claim “Sales numbers clearly show this to be false.”, you’ve extrapolated each sale to represent consensus about a specific aspect of a device, but you haven’t managed to isolate the variables properly. We’d have a much better idea of what consumers want if they had an *explicit* choice on the matter in isolation of all other variables.

Just to reiterate for emphasis, you couldn’t draw a conclusion from coarse election data alone about the whether the population believes in an aspect as specific as gun rights. There may be some correlation, but to even find it means asking specific fine grained questions and not just jumping to conclusions based on the coarsely grained votes.

Sorry for the length of this post, I just think it’s important to get this distinction right since it’s a common misuse of sales numbers.

Edit: In the end though, we can agree that a removable battery is probably not going to be a decisive priority even for those people who would prefer it.

My Nexus 7 is my personal device; however, with a wife and a child at home, it’s not used only by me.

I welcome this feature as my card was almost charged for some silly application because my lovely 6 year old clicked away with nice shiny buttons to enhance an app with a talking cat. By buying him tooth paste.. Dear god..

Let’s see … no microSD card ….. not a deal breaker, but very disappointing and a very bad trend that I am seeing.

But the deal breaker is if it’s true is no removable battery which is another very bad trend I’m seeing.

I think I’m going to pull the trigger on the Samsung Google phone. It’s cheaper, 32 GB storage and you can swap out the battery. For the life of me I cannot see how people are letting them get away with no removable battery.

Maybe it is a going trend with general consumers, the thinking that “by the time the battery dies, I may already be good to go for another new phone, so why buy another battery? Sooo, I don’t think I need a removable battery.” 🙂

Might be because they want as many manufacturers on board. Current Play Store listings have a phone from LG, a 7 inch tablet from Asus, and a 10 inch one from Samsung. Pretty well spread out, imho.

Might also be due to the whole yakju debacle Samsung created with the Galaxy Nexus, where I had to flash stock “pure Google” yakju firmware to replace the yakju-xx/whatever on mine just to get timely updates. Verizon users in the US might relate to what I’m talking about here (also explains why the Nexus 4 ditches LTE).

Might also be due to Samsung not putting much weight behind the Galaxy Nexus’ development. It’s a decent device, but the specs and performance weren’t exactly what I’d call Nexus-level.

Might be that Google actually listened to my complaints about Samsung products having terrible reliability.

I see everyone winging about the SD card.. while I concur that it would be nice to have an SD card.. at the price they are selling it unlocked that’s a great deal. I would prefer no sdcard and a great price than to have an SD card and be paying top dollar/pound/euro…

Everyone talking about how the phone looks determining whether they’ll purchase it or not reminds me of what is often said about those of us who use Apple devices: namely that we only care about them because how they look. Funny how it’s just fine to do that when we’re talking about Google and LG, isn’t it? </sarcasm>

In all seriousness Thom, you did come off a bit shallow here. I don’t think you are shallow, at least from your other writings, but it just struck me that way. I’m not trying to antagonize, just trying to be constructive.

Everyone talking about how the phone looks determining whether they’ll purchase it or not reminds me of what is often said about those of us who use Apple devices: namely that we only care about them because how they look. Funny how it’s just fine to do that when we’re talking about Google and LG, isn’t it? </sarcasm>

Unfortunately, this nonsense has spilled over into the mainstream. If it’s comfortable to hold and functions well, who gives a shit about what it looks like? It’s an inanimate object. You’re not going to make love to it. Or at least, I hope you’re not, but I wouldn’t put it past some people. The way some folks talk about how ‘sexy’ a phone is, I wouldn’t be surprised if they imagine it having tits on the front

Uh, I have always cared about how my stuff looks. I prefer using something that looks pleasing than to use something that looks like ass – especially when it comes to something I have to look at multiple times a day.

That may not matter to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s an invalid requirement. You’re also not a better person for not caring about that, you know.

I don’t think this Nexus 4 looks like ass. It is, however, pretty nondescript, which is fine by me. I think it looks better than my current Galaxy Nexus. Obviously it’s no N9, but then again no phone is, not even the Lumia that added capacitive buttons to the N9’s clean design.

Uh, I have always cared about how my stuff looks. I prefer using something that looks pleasing than to use something that looks like ass – especially when it comes to something I have to look at multiple times a day.

Sure, all other things being equal, but if you’re willing to write a device off because of the way it looks without any regard to how well it actually functions, then please kindly remove yourself from the gene pool, so we don’t end up with other people like you

Unfortunately, this nonsense has spilled over into the mainstream. If it’s comfortable to hold and functions well, who gives a shit about what it looks like? It’s an inanimate object.

It was always like that, people caring & putting effort into looks, don’t approach it like it’s something new (look at folk dresses and trinkets for one example, old jewellery and cherished monuments at some others)

The Nexus 4 looks very sleek and with that glass back and subtle grid of shiny specs. I bet it looks pretty great up close. Simple and not showy. I think the Nexus 4 is a damn sexy phone.

The Nexus 10 has grown on me from the first leak i saw to the current the pictures with the release. The reviews says that it is a solid device and the back is similar to the Nexus 7.

I believe a big goal with the devices is to break the mold of making devices very similar to Apple and experiment with different looking devices. The Nexus 10 won’t be confused with the other 50 Android (and non-android) tablets when set on a table with the screen is off. This is good thing and it’s Google trying to differentiate that they are not just another company wanting to clone Apple’s success by doing very similar designs.

The Nexus 4 shows this, but I believe the Nexus 10 is really going after something unique (and maybe not all that showy).

I will probably be getting both. Although I have owned every other device with the Nexus name on it so far so I am a bit of sucker for the “brand”/

Looks for me as the Nexus 4 is foremost a push to the lower end segment. A cheap & yet long term supported power phone. With all competition pricing there devices at iPhone level Google delivering also to the low(er) price segments is clever. I am sure this will sell well just like the cheap(er) 7 tablets that hit market like a bomb. There is a huge demand for low cost devices and google is, if not filling them then at least contributing to more choice in that segment.

I hope there next target is a <$100 phone bringing more choice into the S40+Bada dumbphone landscape and increasing Android’s market share future beyond the smartphone segment. Its the right time to focus on JB like performance improvements rather then doubling the number of CPU’s and RAM with every new Nexus. Better concentrate on battery life, on fluid workflows and on cheap devices.

The one problem that they face by pushing to the lower end of the market is.. How do you monetise if nobody buys applications then what is the attraction for developers. I am a huge android fan and almost always BUY an application as opposed to use the free versions for the simple reason that I hate advertising getting in the way of a clean experience.

That’s the same reason why I love vanilla android.. I loath the bloat that samsung, htc and others put in to their roms.. then people wonder why it takes so long for them to update.. not really surprising.

You are the only vendor that has Contract free, unlocked, inexpensive quality smartphones…..now I have to get your Nexus 4 rather than my planned upgrade in 10 months to a windows phone because the Nexus 4 has everything I want now for the price I would have paid as a “subsidized” handset.

Yup, the price point is such a temptation isn’t it? It made me do a second (a third, a fourth) take on whether I should go get one already even if I really don’t need to right now…but, the thought of my wife wringing my neck woke me up right quick 😉

* Android 4.2 – finally we get multi-user accounts (there’s been hacks on top of Android to get it in the past, but it’s official now…yay!).

* Nexus 4 – repeated the proven mistake of releasing an 8GB Android device with no SD card (see entry-level Nexus 7 – now discontinued very quickly!). Otherwise, the UK price is good for the specs.

* Nexus 7 now price-matching the Fire HD – very good, now continues the N7 as being the best 7″ tablet of any type on the market.

* Nexus 10 in the UK releasing at extortionate prices. I was so excited by the N10’s specs and was just waiting for the UK price to be announced this week. I was completely crestfallen at the prices (note: these include 20% VAT – sales tax in the US is typically 4-7%):

319 pounds for the 16GB Nexus 10 – that’s $514 folks.

389 (!!) pounds for the 32GB Nexus 10 – that’s a painful $627.

And can you spot the highly dubious price difference: 70 pounds ($113) for just 16GB of extra storage! That’s 4.37 pounds ($7.05) per GB, when SSDs in the UK are now 50p ($0.80) per GB retail inc VAT. This means Google are charging over 8 times the retail cost for the extra storage.

And, yes, in the UK, the 32GB Nexus 10 is a mere 10 pounds ($16) less than the 16GB iPad 4, so sales of the former in the UK will be disastrous, IMHO. Strangely, the front of the Nexus 10 looks eerily like my HP TouchPad, which has 32GB storage for less than a third of the Nexus 10’s price in the UK. Looks like I’m stuck with the TouchPad for a while longer then.

The most interesting new feature here is multiuser support, which is a feature that should’ve been on tablets from the very beginning.

No, there’s no need at all for multiuser support in an OS, which has been prepared for desktops, not for servers.

Nowadays the computers are so cheap, that everyone can have his/her own. Therefore multiuser “feature” simply makes an OS unnecessarily complicated. In case of need for multiuser one could use Linux/xBSD – there wasn’t any need to bloat Android with this.